School Counseling Program Updates

Thank you so much for our time together on Wednesday! I know this is the busiest time of year, with so much to prepare before we welcome students back, and I deeply appreciate the energy and engagement you brought to our work.

Together, we:

• 🎉 Celebrated our Comprehensive School Counseling Program – reflecting on progress and successes.

• 📘 Engaged in the School Counseling Handbook Activity – strengthening alignment and clarity of practice.

• 🤝 Collaborated on Continuum of Care Planning – ensuring responsive supports for all students.

• 🔄 Received key updates on Language Access, Risk Screen Process, Wayfinder, the Activity Tracker in Synergy, and SchooLinks.

• 🛠️ Explored the CSCP Planning Tool – with dedicated work time to apply and plan for the year ahead.

It was a full and productive day, and I am so grateful for the commitment you each bring to serving students. Our shared work continues to strengthen the foundation for every student’s success!

Here is the slide deck for your reference!

Administrator Partnership

We encourage you to schedule your Annual Administrator Conference with your building administrator early this fall. This dedicated time allows us to align on counseling priorities, clarify expectations, and strengthen our collaboration in support of our school community. By engaging in this partnership, we can ensure a consistent, equitable counseling program that empowers every BLS student to thrive.

This year, we’re excited to introduce the new Activity Tracker in Synergy as a way to capture and elevate the incredible work school counselors are doing every day. Instead of logging student conferences, this new tool will allow you to document your interactions with students—whether it’s through responsive services, individual planning, consultation with staff and families, or intervention and support groups. Even better, it’s super easy to use and fully connects with the MTSS data module, creating a seamless link between the counseling work you’re doing and the larger system of student support across our schools.

One important shift is that classroom lessons will now live on your CSCP School Plan rather than in the Activity Tracker. This means your focus in the tracker will be on capturing individual and small-group work, along with the meaningful consultation you provide in collaboration with staff and families.

The best part? All of this information will be housed in the MTSS module and reflected on the Student Timeline and MTSS EWS reports—providing valuable insights into student needs and progress. Don’t worry, this data will only be visible to counselors and administrators, ensuring it remains a professional tool for strengthening our support systems. And with analytics currently being built, we’ll soon have powerful new ways to review and use this data to inform programming and highlight the impact of our counseling work.

Here is the document that shows the flow/clicks in Synergy.

✨ Thanks to everyone who joined our quick high school meeting on aligned policies and practices! We know this time of year is extra busy, and we appreciate you carving out a few minutes to connect and make sure we’re starting the year on the same page.

📂 Missed it or want to take another look? Here’s the presentation link for easy access!

College Application Manager

• SchooLinks rolled over students in July, so incoming seniors should be able to pair their common app accounts with SchooLinks and get their college application manager up to date. We also sent out district social media updates around this topic on August 1st.
• If students complete the MFA as was asked in the spring , they will be able to log into their SchooLinks account on a personal device, otherwise, they will need to wait until they get their school iPad to log into SchooLinks.
• You as their counselor can see their college application manager and course plan and make updates if you need on your end.
• The Brag sheet has been updated to one single brag sheet and both teacher/counselors can see it in CAM and the Letter of Rec Portal.
• Remember, we have tons of resources in both our drive and SchooLinks help center for college application, building a college list, exploration, etc.
• This will be great for both core school counseling programming as well as tier 2/targeted college application support for you to run with your students.

• Reminder: Please update your school profile for the 2025-26 school year and upload to SchooLinks. Once you have those completed, please send me (Jess) a link to your profile. We will be sharing with communications as they are in process of building our new website.
• If you need support with changing the PDF (it should be editable) please contact Michael Asher at the Print Shop. He created each school’s template and can update it, if needed.
• If you have any curriculum updates that impact students course progression or meeting of a requirement, please make sure you include those details on school profiles as most colleges rely on that information when looking at transcripts.